Just like that I am fat and bored. I am in love with biscuits. I am listless. I am chilly. I am not sure what I am waiting for. I am this moment eating hummus (store-bought) and carrots and cucumber to tip the biscuit balance. Biscuits and boredom. I used to think and say I don't get bored. I think that's probably still true, but this morning has tested the theory. I believe this to be actual ennui.
I am an anxious person, as many may be aware (and many have told me they can't believe). I believe that the anxious amongst us can also be good risk-takers. Anxiety is fed by the unknown. Risk is taken when calculated. I'm not sure why I'm writing this, other than I thought it was a good thought I had the other day. Being stuck in the present with spare biscuits is not a risky situation. I've also tried for a few days to do that thing where you stop using shampoo but you have to bust through that WTF my hair is appalling phase. I've never managed that escape velocity and I suspect I will give in tomorrow. Today is very low risk on the the WTF front since I don't plan to leave the house. I think I'm thinking about risk because I don't have any, except possibly catching the virus.
I'll put on a beanie.
Winning. (?)
Here are some things I found on the shore at Greenwich yesterday mudlarking with Claire. They're still in a plastic bag in my backpack.
I'm still consuming my dog-eared copy of Lapham's Quarterly's MEMORY, and it's the best one yet. I like this sad poem by Charles Baudelaire (and translated):
Spleen
I have more memories than if I'd lived a thousand years.
A heavy chest of drawers cluttered with balance sheets,
Processes, love letters, verses, ballads,
And heavy locks of hair enveloped in receipts
Hides fewer secrets than my gloomy brain.
It is a pyramid, a vast burial vault
Which contains more corpses than the potter's field.
—I am a cemetery abhorred by the moon,
In which long worms crawl like remorse
And constantly harass my dearest dead.
I am an old boudoir full of withered roses,
Where lies a whole litter of old-fashioned dresses,
Where the plaintive pastels and the pale Bouchers,
Alone, breathe in the fragrance from an opened vial.
Nothing is so long as those limping days
When under the heavy flakes of snowing years,
Ennui, the fruit of dismal apathy,
Becomes as large as immortality.
—Henceforth you are no more, O living matter,
Than a block of granite surrounded by vague terrors,
Dozing in the depths of a hazy Sahara
An old sphinx ignored by a heedless world,
Omitted from the map, whose savage nature
Sings only in the rays of a setting sun.
It's odd how doing this has kept me company. Spurting inner monologue into a box, revealing things I probably may mightn't wouldn't even say to my actual living flesh friends? You lucky reader.
It's time for tea.